And if so what are the ratios? Are they as dominantly righties as humans?
Are animals right or left 'handed'?
Submitted 3 weeks ago by SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Nikls94@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Jedi@bolha.forum 3 weeks ago
I remember seeing somewhere that you can know the handedness of an elephant by looking at its tusks. The smaller tusk is the one that is used the most.
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Correct. Elephant tusks are used for (amongst other things) digging, and on most of them, the right side tusk is more worn down.
Papanca@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I know that dogs are, but i don’t know the percentages. You can see it by observing the front paws when they start to walk; which one do they usually start with
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
Cats are mostly left handed if I remember, so we can also add them to the handedness list
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
Cats’ hearts are also on the right-hand side of their chests, the opposite to where humans’ are. Not sure if this correlates with handedness.
exixx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I have two 5 year old cats. They both preferentially use only one paw to scoop food from their feeder bowls. Mulder is right pawed, and Scully is left pawed. I don’t know anything about any other animals, so I’m guessing yes from my sample size of 2.
stoicmaverick@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You just typed all that out so that you could tell us all that your cats are named Mulder and Scully and I’m happy that you did. Nice. My friend’s two cats are named Brunhilda, and Dawg.
rowinxavier@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Handedness is not constant over the animal kingdom.
Kangaroos and wallabies tend to be left handed, though wallabies seem to be right handed for strength tasks. In dogs, horses, and cats females have been shown to be left handed, while males are right handed. All of these are tendencies and not at all strict, so specific inviduals may be left or right handed with no regard to their sex or species, but the trend is there.
The level of handedness that humans have is really white extreme compared to our closest cousins. Other primates are far less handed and one of the things that drives this may be tool use and associated teaching. If you are teaching someone how to do something and they have opposite handedness to you it is harder to teach, and also shared tools are easier to manage if they are not in two different versions.
The causes seem to be a mix of genetics, developmental cues, and maybe brain structure, though the exact amounts of each and whether there are other factors are unclear.